In a period marked by warlords, revolution, and the collapse of imperial rule, two political parties — the Kuomintang (KMT) and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) — fought to define China’s future. UC Berkeley Political Science Professor Xiaobo Lü explores how both political parties built and maintained power amid instability.
His new book, “Domination and Mobilization: The Rise and Fall of Political Parties in China’s Republican Era,”offers a sweeping analysis of the KMT and CCP during one of the most volatile periods in Chinese history. What began as Lü’s curiosity about the mechanics of party survival evolved into his decade-long archival research study — and eventually into a new theory on how political organizations consolidate power amid fragmentation.
“Both the CCP and KMT operated in a world where the state was collapsing and authority was contested,” Lü said. “What interested me was how they responded to that — how they tried to fill the void.”
“Domination and Mobilization” explores how each party developed distinct survival strategies. The KMT, though formally in control of the state, relied heavily on elite alliances — forming relationships with landlords, warlords and local bosses to secure short-term gains, the book argues. But this approach left them vulnerable to internal factionalism and inconsistent loyalty, Lü said.
“The CCP couldn’t match the KMT’s resources, so they built them from the ground up,” Lü explained. “They prioritized cohesion, political education and a form of legitimacy that came from mobilizing peasants and embedding in local communities.”
This contrast helped Lü develop a broader framework for understanding political party resilience. In his view, parties that combine Dominant party leadership (domination) with grassroots reach (mobilization) are more likely to endure and expand — especially in states with weak bureaucratic capacity where formal institutions are weak or absent.
"Domination meant eliminating elite conflicts," he said. "Mobilization aims to achieve compliance from the targeted population.
He added that the party’s focus on ideological training, rural organizing and sustained local presence allowed the CCP to operate as a “parallel state” long before taking national power in 1949.
Beyond the historical findings, Lü believes the book offers lessons for how we think about political development more broadly. He pointed to insurgent movements, populist coalitions and authoritarian regimes that often operate in institutional vacuums.
“You see echoes of this logic in many contexts — parties becoming the state, because the state itself is absent,” he said.
He also draws connections between the CCP’s historical strategies and its modern governance style under Xi Jinping. “Mobilized compliance is still very much part of the playbook,” Lü said. “From neighborhood watch apps to public health enforcement, the state still relies on citizens to watch each other.”
When asked what he hopes students take away from the book, Lü didn’t hesitate: “That parties don’t succeed just because of ideas. They succeed because they organize — and because they adapt.”
As he looks ahead, Lü is planning to explore two new areas of research: the mobilization capacity of contemporary CCP grassroots organizations and the evolving role of the military in the annex of party-state-society relations.
